Best Star Wars game there could be...

[SolkaTruesilver]

Hi there. Recently, on the "Find a RTS for my Father" thread, there were comments about just how good the Space Battles of EaW are, but the ground battles are utterly inept, and the general strategic screen is... bland...

And then, I wondered... What would you replace the bad parts of EaW with? Or, better. Let's take EaW's space battles, and let's try to find which best combination would work best for an awesome space conquest game (I avoid to say "Star Wars games" here, because I don't want us to refrain ourselves at Lucasart's products only. Let the mod community creates adaptation to our virtual perfect game to the different universes)

First, the space battle engin of EaW. If somebody knows a better one, please tell me. I guess that Homeworld Enging and/or Sins of a Solar Empire also would be quite interesting. Anybody has good suggestions?

After, we have the general strategic screen. No question, I'd say Star Wars Rebellion. When you really got into a mature style of play, with a lot of espionnage mission, going around with special black ops, sabotage, assassination, counter-espionnage, that was a very deep gameplay. If some people actually knows a more interesting strategic screen gameplay, please tell me!

For ground combat... First, there is Dawn of War, off course.. (there will ALWAYS be Dawn of Daw). I am sure nobody wants to think about Force Commander, so let's just bleach that part of our memory right now. Star Wars Battleground was... bland and boring, to say the least. Starcraft just don't fit the bill, IMHO.

Maybe Ground Control? that would make an interesting setup. Large maps, restricted reinforcement (since you build your regiments on the strategic map, not in a skirmish). Cover, terrain advantage, etc...


Anyway, please insert your 2-decicredits to the conversation!

[loopy]

First person shooter a la Call of Duty. I mean, I know Star Wars Battlefront was created, but it always struck me as a bit... yeah.

I'd quite like to have a hot-swappable battle where others could jump in and take over individual soldiers in your ground battles. Only an idea though, it would take some serious imagination to make it workable.

[SolkaTruesilver]

First person shooter a la Call of Duty. I mean, I know Star Wars Battlefront was created, but it always struck me as a bit... yeah.

I'd quite like to have a hot-swappable battle where others could jump in and take over individual soldiers in your ground battles. Only an idea though, it would take some serious imagination to make it workable.

Republic Commando had some serious mojo going on for FPS game. Have you tried it?

[warty goblin]

For RTS on the ground, there's only one way to go- Company of Heroes. Think about it, Star Wars battles tend to leave large craters across the terrain, and nothing does craters better than the Essence engine when it comes to RTSs. Plus, who wouldn't love to see an AT-AT walk on a couple houses?

For the rest of EaW, I'd impliment the following changes.
1) Increase pop cap by a massive amount, 5-10 times or so.
2) All strikecraft are now capital ship based. For ease of management, each ship would launch fighters and bombers, which could be managable at that level- you tell the fighters to do something, and the bombers to do something, or you order the individual squadrons.
3) You can set fighters on escort or Combat Air Patrol (well, Combat Space Patrol) roles by clicking on a friendly capital ship/bomber squad. The fighter will then follow that unit and engage any strikecraft that move close to it.
4) Hardpoints that are not destroyed gradually repair themselves over the course of a battle. Destroyed hardpoints stay destroyed.
5) The interface no longer takes a magnifying glass to read and pixel level precision to use while still taking up a third of the screen.
6) Ships are no longer completely repaired after a battle. All partial damage to hardpoints is removed, and you get to fully heal one hardpoint immediately. Any additional damage is healed at the rate of one hardpoint/day. To make this less tedious to manage, you can queue up repairs immediately following a battle. This means that you can lose a battle, but still cause enough damage to slow the enemy advance, making attrition much more viable.
7) The galactic map is now turn based, like it should be. This makes build times and suchlike easier to manage.
8) Plex troopers are no longer the bringers of the vehicle Apocalypse. Really makes it hard to get your Hoth on, when you know that just over the ridge could lurk three guys with RPGs fully capable of blowing the crap out of your entire bloody armor group.
9) The tech tree is much, much deeper. Want to improve the performance of your Star Destroyers? Upgrade turbolasers. Better fighters? Lasers and engines. Unlocking units is boring and lacks strategic tension, choosing between a selection of viable options is interesting. Remember, if you are feeling the anguish of indecision, it's a sign of game balance.
10) You can go Base Delta Zero on planets. Calling in bombing runs is all well and good, I want orbital bombardment.
11) The ion cannon no longer rapes ships quite that hard.

[Ascension]

8) Plex troopers are no longer the bringers of the vehicle Apocalypse. Really makes it hard to get your Hoth on, when you know that just over the ridge could lurk three guys with RPGs fully capable of blowing the crap out of your entire bloody armor group.

Amen, brother. I went Imperial on my first game in the hopes of getting to smash stuff with overwhelming firepower.

...

Overwhelming firepower doesn't really work all that well in EaW. Space battles are quite fun, though. And I totally killed Admiral Ackbar. Muahahahah.

[Lord Mancow]

I to totally love the space battles and I have a tendancy to race up the tech tree and then just put together massive space fleets and blow the hell out of anyone who tries to fight me... And then leave the planet. Although the Death Star solves the needing to invade the planet problem.


10) You can go Base Delta Zero on planets. Calling in bombing runs is all well and good, I want orbital bombardment.

In the expansion you can use orbital bombardment though it varies between faction. Rebels: Ion blast. Imperials: Turbolaser barrage (not that good). Zann Consortsium: Massive ion/ destruction blast (by far the best in my opinion)

For the ground combat possibly something like the World in conflict reinforcement system as well as the tactical aid points?

[Superglucose]

9) Remember, if you are feeling the anguish of indecision, it's a sign of game balance.

QFT, and I am officially asking if I can throw this phrase in people's faces.

Also for space conquest it's hard to beat Allegiance imo. Actually flying the ships... now that's fun.

[Mando Knight]

1) Increase pop cap by a massive amount, 5-10 times or so.
2) All strikecraft are now capital ship based. For ease of management, each ship would launch fighters and bombers, which could be managable at that level- you tell the fighters to do something, and the bombers to do something, or you order the individual squadrons.
3) You can set fighters on escort or Combat Air Patrol (well, Combat Space Patrol) roles by clicking on a friendly capital ship/bomber squad. The fighter will then follow that unit and engage any strikecraft that move close to it.


1) You can alter the pop cap by a simple rewrite of the right XML file. I've done it before...

2) You can still make unit groups in space battles, you know, allowing you to access all of the fighters simultaneously or all of the bombers simultaneously, etc.

3) It's called the "Defend unit" button, it's on the command interface, and it'll make the selected units defend the target. (Unless it's an enemy, in which they'll still kill it voraciously)

[warty goblin]

QFT, and I am officially asking if I can throw this phrase in people's faces.

Also for space conquest it's hard to beat Allegiance imo. Actually flying the ships... now that's fun.

Sure, although that is the abbreviated version. The full version is something like this: When you are confronted by a decision and feel the anguish of indicision, it is a sign of game balance. If however you feel the apathy of boredom, it is a sign of game suckage.

@ Lord Mancow. See the above, then find the problem with WiC- namely that since bleeding everything regenerates, there are no strategic choices, only short term tactical ones. As a game, it brought on much of the apathy of boredom in me.

I am of the firm opinion that every game in order to incorporate some sort of strategy, needs some hard decision, where it is only possible to go one route, and difficult if not impossible to change your mind after the fact. This allows you to get screwed over, which in turn brings on the agony of indicision when you have to make one of these choices, suggesting a balanced game.

Now the idea of landing your troops during a planetary invasion was one of the things that EaW did very right...in concept. The problem was that capturing reinforcement points made no sense, and they didn't tend to be in particularly sensible locations, which made it damn near impossible to maintain a unified offensive front, particularly when fighting through the infinite waves of the planet's population. At the scale of the map, having a never ending tide of partisans just didn't make sense and was annoying as hell. One or two companies would be great, add to the flavor, as would booby-traps, and snipers in windows and suchlike. Make it feel like I'm actually invading someplace, as opposed to playing eternal population whack-a-mole.

The way I would do the landing troops thing is this:
1) Introduce the idea of supply. You gain more supply when you capture a point, and as long as you have enough supply for every unit in your army, you don't have to worry. After you hit the supply cap however you can still call units in, they start out with full supply and run out over time. Once they run out, they are immobilized until you either raise your supply cap, or lose enough units to supply them again, and, in case of a planetary retreat, immobilized units are left behind and considered destroyed.
2) This allows you to deploy a very large army, at the risk of losing a good bit of it, or using a smaller army without the risk of losing units from lack of supply, but having fewer troops to work with. This also allows the buffing of defensive measures, since it would force the attacker to deploy a large army, but run the serious risk of having their war effort collapse out from under you. Again, agonizing choices.

[Linkavitch]

What does EaW mean? Also, I don't actually own it, but I have played Battlefront on numerous occasions, and I enjoyed it immensely. On the Bespin Platforms level, no matter, what side I was playing as, I would take a ship, and blast everyone on the ground, and snipe everyone off of the big, round tower.

[warty goblin]

What does EaW mean? Also, I don't actually own it, but I have played Battlefront on numerous occasions, and I enjoyed it immensely. On the Bespin Platforms level, no matter, what side I was playing as, I would take a ship, and blast everyone on the ground, and snipe everyone off of the big, round tower.

Empire at War, the first Star Wars RTS to not suck. This leads Star Wars fans, their brains scared by Galactic Battlegrounds, to think it is actually good, which is probably overstating the case. It is however, decent, and the space battles are fun, although I rather wish it didn't take my Star Destroyer driving 3/4 of the way around the map and through three asteroid field and two ion storms to turn around.

[Pan Dildoe]

actually, I think SWG pre CU was the best star wars game ever, but I guess that does not count cause its an MMO... well, Kotor and JA "ground fights" were pretty good, so take that and add some kinky star wars space battle, and you should get a good game...

[Mando Knight]

The way I would do the landing troops thing is this:
1) Introduce the idea of supply. You gain more supply when you capture a point, and as long as you have enough supply for every unit in your army, you don't have to worry. After you hit the supply cap however you can still call units in, they start out with full supply and run out over time. Once they run out, they are immobilized until you either raise your supply cap, or lose enough units to supply them again, and, in case of a planetary retreat, immobilized units are left behind and considered destroyed.
2) This allows you to deploy a very large army, at the risk of losing a good bit of it, or using a smaller army without the risk of losing units from lack of supply, but having fewer troops to work with. This also allows the buffing of defensive measures, since it would force the attacker to deploy a large army, but run the serious risk of having their war effort collapse out from under you. Again, agonizing choices.

I think that your initial supply should depend on how many capital ships you have in orbit (more ships in orbit means you can protect a larger number of supply ships...), which would in turn be limited by the number of controlled local hyperspace lanes and your total faction size...

[Destro_Yersul]

Let's just mix and mash a bunch of different games together, and we shall have the ultimate Star Wars RTS!

Take the space battles from EaW. Those were good, even if the Zann Consortium was so massively overpowered it wasn't funny. Actually, they were OP on land as well. I mean.. Canderous Assault Tanks? Troopers with disintegrators? WHAT WERE THEY THINKING!? You could win against anything on ground using a force of nothing but mercs with disintegrators and a bunch of tanks. And if you captured Kamino they were CHEAP mercs!

...ok, ranting done. so..

Space Battles from EaW. They're really good, and I wouldn't change them. Well, maybe I'd make turrets suck less.

Ground based combat is now a combination of Dawn of War and EaW. Units have less health than in DoW, but can still be replaced individually. Rockets and Mass Drivers aren't godly, bombing run availability is based on the number of orbiting ships you have, as is Orbital bombardment. The rebel one doesn't use Ion Cannons.

Galactic should be similar to EaW, but toss in some SoaSE (mostly the logistics system) and give the imperials a more reliable way to spy on enemy planets.

[Arlion]

I would like a game thats similary to he strategic part of eAw (planet control,unit creation,faction management)but when a battle starts,the game turns like star wars battlefront,but with the respective army size that each side had before the battle started (no like battlefront,where everyone has the same army size)

[Tengu_temp]

I'd like to see a Star Wars dating sim. You're Anakin.

[warty goblin]

I'd like to see a Star Wars dating sim. You're Anakin.

I'm not sure whether or not the poor dialog and impossible difficulty would be considered flaws or features...

[SolkaTruesilver]

What? Nobody has any good word to say about Star Wars : Rebellion? I mean.. it was an impressive global strategic game, except for the sucky space battles, don't you agree?

[Zarah]

What? Nobody has any good word to say about Star Wars : Rebellion? I mean.. it was an impressive global strategic game, except for the sucky space battles, don't you agree?

Rebellion was a fantastic game. The learning curve is a bit steep, but once you get into the hang of things, it's probably the best strategic Star Wars game that exists. If they could remake it with a better space battle system, and a system for ground battles, I would buy it in a heartbeat. I hoped EaW would fill this gap, but was let down pretty quickly.

[Sanzh]

In terms of ground battles, a combination of the Total War games for larger, open battles and Company of Heroes for smaller skirmishes and city encounters would be awesome. EaW has a fine space battle system, however, so that'd stay.

[Kranden]

hell id pay for another Xwing Vs Tie Fighter mmmmmm

[loopy]

Republic Commando had some serious mojo going on for FPS game. Have you tried it?

I've played through that game. Didn't like it at all. Finished the entire thing using the vibro-shiv gauntlet for every enemy that wasn't a vehicle/giant robot.

No challenge in it.

Oh, and they killed off Sev, the only character that I liked, haha.

[Talya]

I have liked lots of Star Wars games...but never in the style you're playing.

My favorites:
X-Wing/Tie Fighter (series)
Dark Forces
DF2: Jedi Knight
JK2: Jedi Outcast
JO: Jedi Academy
Knights of the Old Republic
KotOR2: The Sith Lords (wish they'd finished it)

Don't have a console,so haven't played TFU, but it looks like one I'd like.

[Siosilvar]

4) Hardpoints that are not destroyed gradually repair themselves over the course of a battle. Destroyed hardpoints stay destroyed.

This is actually implemented, but should be expanded. Currently, hardpoints that get to 0% (I've only ever found this on the space stations) can be repaired over time.

I agree with everything else you say, as well, except perhaps the interface. You only need to get within 20 pixels or so.

[SmartAlec]

For starship type combat, I've always been very fond of the Starfleet Command series, but it would need some pretty heavy reworking before it would make even vague sense in a Star Wars context. Fighters would have to be vastly more powerful, for a start...

For anyone who wants to see the complete history of Star Wars games, by the way, Gametrailers.com has The Star Wars Retrospective - a series of 10 downloadable short movies that go over all the Star Wars games ever made. I found it interesting viewing, but then, I'm easy to please.

http://www.gametrailers.com/retrospective.php

[Theodoric]

Perhaps some Nexus: The Jupiter Incident elements?
That game still has some of the nicest grahics I've seen in a space game ever since it was released, and gameplay of about the same level.

[warty goblin]

This is actually implemented, but should be expanded. Currently, hardpoints that get to 0% (I've only ever found this on the space stations) can be repaired over time.

I agree with everything else you say, as well, except perhaps the interface. You only need to get within 20 pixels or so.

Yeah, pixel level precision is an overstatement, but nevertheless, the special ability buttons are way too small given the size of the interface, and tend to be the same color as the background panel, making them hard to see at a glance. I mean the interface in EaW is gigantic for the amount of data it actually displays. Not original SupCom bad, but still bad. Compare with something like Sins of a Solar Empire, which manages a lot more information with far, far less screen real estate.

[snoopy13a]

TIE Fighter is my favorite Star Wars game.